Category Archives: Brew Method

This time I actually planned to do a light summer beer and found a couple of different recipes for Hopback Summer Lightning (mostly tweaked versions of the Graham Wheeler recipe). I took these and tinkered with them a little further out of bloody-mindedness more than anything else in particular.

I’m still getting lousy efficiencies (not sure why I don’t seem to be able to get much over 50%) so if you’re doing better then your overall grain bill will be too high and can be lowered, but the ratios came out very nicely. It’s also a really simple recipe.

First step into all-grain brewing and I’ve clearly got a few problems to sort out with efficiency as my OG fairly significantly failed to hit the mark.
That, of course, is why you do test batches at the 4.5 litre brew length so I don’t have an entire cupboard full to get through. As it turned out, what has emerged is something very light tasting and low alcohol – what some US brewers seem to be referring to as “lawnmower beer”. I think I know what I did wrong (not enough bag squeezing and inconsistent mash temp) so I’ll give this one another go over the next couple of weeks. In the interim – it’s a running beer !!

I thought it was time to have a go at brewing a fairly generic British ‘Best Bitter’ and, with one exception, it worked out pretty well. Still not quite as clear as I would have liked, but the biggest variation from my planning was that it had a mild, but still recognisable, hint of ginger.

Obviously when you make a strong ginger beer, you need to take extreme measures when it comes to cleaning out your FV and I’d not quite been rigorous enough. A scout around the blogs suggests that I’m not the first person to have fallen foul of this one, and that a long soak in bicarb solution or dilute bleach is the way forward…or a new FV!

Heat 10L of water to 70°C (takes about 30 mins), steep the crystal malt in a bag for 30 minutes then discard and top up to 11L.

Bring back to the boil and stir in the malt extract.

Bring back to the boil, stir in the bittering hops (62g)and boil for 45 min.

Add the flavouring hops (35g) and the Irish Moss, boil for 15 min.

Turn off the heat and allow to cool for 10 min.

Remove the hop bags and cool in the sink to about 30°C (about 30 mins)

Pour into FV and top up the water to 20L aerating well and then stirring vigorously to make sure they are well mixed. Check the OG (1042) and put in water bath to warm to 21°C then pitch the yeast.

Two weeks fermenting at 21°C then racked out (OG 1004- wow!) so nominal ABV of 4.9%.Racked into bottling bucket with priming sugar (110g sugar in 480ml water) , bottled and conditioned at room temp for 2 weeks.

Reading some of the posts in the homebrew forums, I realise how incredibly fortunate I am in having a huge amount of tolerance and support from my beloved for the strange smells and liquids which emerge periodically from the kitchen. She loves ginger beer, although I often find it too sweet, so this is a home brew-hybrid – a ginger beer well hopped to provide some bitterness to offset the intrinsic sweetness.

Heat 11.4L of water to 70°C, steep the crystal malt for 30 minutes then remove the bag.

Bring back to the boil and stir in the malt extract.

Bring back to the boil and stir in the bittering hops (57g)

Boil for 30 minutes then add the flavouring hops (28g)

Boil for 15 minutes then take off the heat.

Add the aroma hops (57g)

Leave for 10 minutes then transfer to cold water bath to cool after removing hop bags. (Mistake #1: I left the hop bags in by accident and left it to cool for 7 hours while I went out. So rather than the 40 IBUs I was planning, I have a completely unguessable extremely hoppy but rather nice overhopped Pale)

Finally removed the hop bags, transferred to fermenter and topped up the water to 19L. Put in the water bath and when temperature rose to 21°C checked the OG (1050) and pitched the yeast.

Two weeks fermenting at 21°C then racked out (OG 1010) so nominal ABV of 5.2%.(Mistake #2: Had a brain fart and racked into bottling bucket with priming sugar (110g sugar in 480ml water) but then left it to condition in the bottling bucket! So I ended up doing a forced carbonation under bottled C02 in a pressure barrel.)

This was a quick-and-cheap weissbier effort using a kit from Wilkinsons (this one). I first tasted it at New Year when it was still a little fresh, but through January and February it has just got progressively better.